How to Allow People to Subscribe to You in Facebook

Every time Facebook rolls out changes, there’s bound to be a lot of buzz of around it. But one update that caught my fancy now and which I find truly interesting is the Subscribe button. Personally, I haven’t seen anyone who has activated this new Facebook feature probably because it’s a new (duh!) and people are still deciding what to do about it.

The answer to the 5K Friends Limit?

Facebook developers are marketing the Subscribe feature as the answer to the 5,000 friends limit imposed by Facebook. If you’re not aware, Facebook only allows you to add 5,000 friends. Many virtual assistant coaches, experts, and Internet marketers I know are not happy with this quota since it forces them to create another Facebook account just so they can accommodate the people who would like to connect with them on this social network. True, they can use their Facebook pages to interact with their fans but there’s just something so special about allowing someone to become your “friend” in Facebook.

With the new Subscribe button, Facebook now allows you to follow the public wall posts of of people you are not friends with. You can now follow politicians, celebrities, and other public figures on Facebook without becoming friends with them. Of course, this assumes that the person you want to follow activates the subscription settings of his Facebook account. Which brings me to the topic of this post, how to allow people to subscribe to you in Facebook. Here’s how:

Log in to your Facebook account.

Go to the Facebook subscriptions page and click on the green “Allow Subscribers” button on the right hand side of the screen. Here is the link to the subscriptions page:

Decide whether you would allow your subscribers to comment. By default, this feature is turned off. But you can turn this on from the drop down options. See image below for reference.

Get notified when someone subscribes to your public walls posts. Or not. It’s all up to you. You can select Anyone, Friends of friends, or No one from the drop down options. Obviously, if you select no one, you will not get any notifications when someone wants to follow your updates. But where is the fun in that? I selected Anyone.

Check your profile. It should now have a subscribe button in between the “Add a friend” and “Message” buttons. If you see it, then it’s a success!

Stalkers Rejoice!

The idea behind the new Facebook button is to allow journalists to get real-time updates from public figures and celebrities. Yet one could argue that this also helps the cause of stalkers and Internet trolls. It’s going to be a whole lot easier for them to follow the object of their desire and ire because they don’t have to be friends with them. Of course, Facebook supporters will argue that allowing people to subscribe to your public updates is OPTIONAL. If you don’t want people knowing your every move, then don’t allow subscriptions.

Or, if you want to allow subscriptions but don’t want everything you post to be available to the whole world, you can set the privacy setting of your posts to Friends or even customize it. Remember, only PUBLIC Facebook updates are available to your subscribers.